Myra Sklarew: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Birdland

                        for Sterling Brown

So I take my seven bucks

to buy a railroad ticket.

 

And with a little luck

hitchhike to the station.

 

The money comes from playing

in a dance band with Vinny Gallo

 

braying on his tenor sax

and Charley Panzner—

 

I forget the others—

and me on the piano.

 

When no one is looking I play

solo piano in taverns after hours

 

up and down Long Island’s South Shore,

singing Billy Strayhorn’s Lush Life.

 

I don’t tell my folks when I hop

on a train at age 14 and head

 

to Birdland where I sit

in the Peanut Gallery for nothing

 

and drink in Miles Davis,

John Coltrane, Count Basie

 

and Oscar Peterson. And not far away

you could go to the Embers

 

and hear Red Norvo on the vibraphone

play the Blues in E Flat.

 

And Stan Getz whose tunes I’d been trying

to play all year and ever since.

 

Sterling, this was before I met you.

Were you there too, singing your poems:

saying “Slim in Atlanta” and “After Winter”

and “Sister Lou.”  Or listening to “Ma Rainey”:

 

O Ma Rainey,

Sing yo’ song:

Now you’s back

Whah you belong,

Git way inside us,

Keep us strong…

O Ma Rainey,

Li’l and low…*

 

Sterling, you made us stand up

in your living room while you played jazz

 

on your phonograph and wouldn’t let us

sit down till we could name who was playing.

 

Sometimes we stood a long, long time.

It was Erroll Garner and Lester Young.

 

Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.

And there was Satchmo who we loved.

 

I never told my folks where I’d been, pretended

to spend the night at a friend’s.

 

But I wouldn’t trade that smokey room

and that gorgeous music that filled us up

 

to the top until it was time to sneak out

of the house and head uptown to Birdland

 

once more. And years later, Sterling, to stand

in your living room, under the alms

 

of a great poet having us listen

to the music you loved and to the words

 

you wrote. Sterling, we could have stayed

there the rest of our lives.

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Myra Sklarew, professor emerita American University, founder of the MFA Program, former president of the Yaddo Artist’s Community, studied biology at Tufts, bacterial viruses at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory, and did research at Yale Medical School in memory and the prefrontal cortex. She has an  M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. Her twelve poetry collections include Lithuania: New and Selected Poems; Prose: Like a Field Riddled by Ants, Over the Rooftops of Time, An Invitation to a Country called Aging (with Patricia Garfinkel), and A Survivor Named Trauma: Holocaust Memory in Lithuania.  A new collection of essays on science and medicine, Lie Perfectly Still, is near completion. In 2011, Sklarew helped launch "A Splendid Wake"—a project to document poets, poetry movements, and literary organizations in the Washington, D.C. area from 1900 to the present, sponsored by the Special Collections Research Center at the Gelman Library, GWU, organized by local poets.  [For more on Sterling Brown, click here.]

(*from Beyond the Blues by Rosey E. Pool, The Hand and Flower Press, 1962, England.)

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Comments

[Barbara Henning]

Terrific memory poem. What great people, time, place to have lived. Thank you.

[Beth Joselow]

This poem opens the heart once more to a sense of what life should be, filled with music, love and hope. Makes me glad once more for years among the poets of Washington, D.C.

[Grace Cavalieri]

I've loved Myra's poetry since I was born to it, and now with Sterling Brown who I loved as well--it doesn't get much better than this. Wonderful the way the poem crosses time and place but remains in the present.

[Emily Fragos]

The voice and cadence are so real and so true. This poem quietly and magically gets the feel of it -- the passion for music that fills us up, the great haunts of the past, the legends of jazz, the smoky clubs, smitten youth. Thank you.

[Don Berger]

I love all the names in this song of Myra Sklarew's--they make a music in themselves,
a great run of sounds in the names alone, and in the notes that each specific, vivid scene triggers.

[Joan Retallack]

What a joy to come across this extraordinary poem by Myra Sklarew. It's marvelous in its form -- open to a brief Ma Rainy performance, to fascinating autobiographical glimpses, and that roll call of great jazz musicians the brilliantly strategic young Myra managed to experience, live and in their element. Brava!

[Susan Francis Campbell]

Wonderful poem!

[David Lehman]

What memories this evokes! In the early 90s, when I lived on 104th Street and West End Avenue, Birdland was on 105th Street and Broadway so I could go there for the jazz-- or just to meet someone for a drink. I remember the night in February 1993 when NYC was hit by a major blizzard, and I went to Birdland for solace, a bite to eat, and music. Again on the day Billy Eckstine died (March 8, 1993) I was there. Rhythm in a riff!

[clarinda]

For me, this wonderfully evocative poem brings me to Baltimore's late and very much lamented Famous Ballroom, where, every Sunday for many years, the huge cavern opened to hundreds of round dining tables peopled with jazz fans--everybody shared the picnics they brought--and listened to literally ALL the people and their "big bands" mentioned in the poem. I'm very lucky to be so old! And to recall Myra from her JHU years. Thanks, everybody. Every single soul.

[clarinda]

By the way, the menu evokes how incredibly low Famous Ballroom Sundays admission was. Four bucks.

[Eileen]

I love this poem 🎶

[Maureen]

Ah the music! Words playing to the ear.

[lally]

MYRA!

[Barbara Einzig]

To call out
like a bird
location in space and time

Fly by it

Thank you!

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

Myra, Myra, Myra, pure birdsong and beautiful. Thank you.

[Diane Ward]

Thank you, Myra & Terence, for this poem with all those people, places, and sounds wrapped up inside.

[Chris Mason]

Beautiful melodic words taking us on the train to Birdland and Sterling Brown’s apartment, where jazz and poetry meet!

[Terence Winch]

Diane: Thanks for the comment.

[Peter Kearney]

It was good to read of the great stars in Birdland and Sterling Brown in Brookland, my neighbor when I lived in that area. My thanks to Myra and Terence.

[Linda Hickman]

Wonderful poem. Brings back many memories of my first nights coming to NYC and being introduced to jazz popping out of tiny local east side bars. Thank you.

[Michael Whelan]

What an arresting way, Myra, you savor and share through a poem such a unique fabulous secret youthful past--sneaking among the who’s, where’s and when’s at the very heart of New York jazz. So close, so young, so bold.

[Simon schuchat]

How great to hear this poem! All hail Myra!

[Myra Sklarew]

My kind thanks to Terence and to all for your words in this sad time. We don't seem to be able to bring what should never have been started to an end.
Myra

[Bernard Welt]

I'm so sorry to have been late getting to know this poem -- by the person who pulled me toward poetry as much as anyone. (Not blaming Myra, of course.) Now I'm thinking of the surprises she's sprung on me over time--all good ones--and today, more surprises. Thank you.

[Sheryl Massaro]

What a joy to live through this poem, Myra! Good to read you again.